After we finish breaking for the new year my group is starting a new campaign in the FATE system. I've never played this one before, is there anything I should know going in?
After we finish breaking for the new year my group is starting a new campaign in the FATE system...
Easton Bennett
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Parker Morris
It isn't an initialism. Just Fate is fine.
Aiden Turner
Don't read FATE Core
Read Atomic Robo instead
The corebook does such a terrible job of impressing upon you why the system does the things it does.
Justin Morgan
Here's a few pointers.
>Stress isn't flat HP, and people don't need to suffer every Consequence to decide "fuck this I'm out".
>Use fate points for actions, don't save them for reactions. Essentially, go on the offensive for a cooler game.
>You might be tempted to use broad aspects like "High Concept: Very Strong Warrior", but that's boring, and doesn't leave any room for Compels. Which brings me to my next point...
>Compel constantly. Compel your own aspects. Compel other people's aspects. Compel scene aspects to fuck yourself. Fate points are insanely good, and an active fate point economy means a juicy game.
And above all, have fun. It's a good system, even if Evil Hat gives it a bad reputation.
Jason Perry
Don’t expect sessions to work like a standard RPG. There’s a much stronger focus on player input and “group narrative building” over “DM presents/players interact”
Josiah Taylor
Play it loose and fun, and don't feel bad about putting your character into bad spots if it makes the story more interesting (and nets you some fate points).
Also, try to make sure you've got aspects that can work to your favor both as an asset and as a compel. Don't think too much about "positive" aspects and "flaws", but aspects that can do double duty. Try to go for aspects that are less "Combat Master" or "Drunkard", and more "Drunken Master".
Angel Ortiz
In my experience as a player, one thing that really stands out is how easy it is to succeed on something you think matters, if you are good at fictional positioning / explaining how you aspect would help. I think that is intentional, but still doesn't feel right. When you can just invoke previously created burst + aspect and get +4 bonus on your roll, it feels almost boring. Maybe it was due to GM being a pussy and never calling difficulty above 4 once in like 5 session that we played though.
Nathan Scott
1) FATE Core is garbage. Sorry, that's hyperbole; I just don't see the point of skills and skill ranks in a game like this.
2) FATE Accelerated is better, but like said, the book doesn't do any better of a job of actually explaining the game itself.
3) It's a narrative game, so think narratively. Having even a single player that just says, "I use [blank] to attack," will fuck up the entire flow and point of the game.
Connor Lee
Yeah, a difficulty of 4 is pretty damn low. It would make everything seem easy, for sure.
Jaxson Davis
Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment
How does it feel to be wrong?
Austin Lopez
faterpg.com
>How does it feel to be wrong?
You tell us.
Angel Stewart
>pretending to play a shit game
Wow master troll here guys
Caleb Wood
kill yourself porkeye pedophile piece of shit
Nicholas Bell
You're one of them Aspect-only groups?
At least that really is consistent, I personally enjoy crunching up the game too much to ignore the beauty of skill columns.
Connor Smith
No, I just prefer Approaches to Skills. Stunts are still a thing, and I let my players use some of the more 'complicated' stunts from Core that FAE leaves out. Really, the only thing I don't like is skills.
Austin Rivera
Sounds like this might be difficult to adjust to coming from years of rules heavy systems of various sorts.
Joseph Bell
>>Compel constantly. Compel your own aspects. Compel other people's aspects. Compel scene aspects to fuck yourself. Fate points are insanely good, and an active fate point economy means a juicy game.
>3) It's a narrative game, so think narratively. Having even a single player that just says, "I use [blank] to attack," will fuck up the entire flow and point of the game.
This. My Fate games have always lived or died on how much the players use Compels, especially on each other. When everyone is throwing ideas about what interesting thing could happen next, regardless of whether or not it's "good" for the party or their character, is when the game shines.
Nathaniel Ortiz
Sure is. Especially if any of the players have only ever been players, never GMed. Fate is kind of about everyone co-GMing.
I like Skills for tuning the genre.
And I was always garbage at letting players just use their best Approach for everything.
Andrew Lewis
>Fate is kind of about everyone co-GMing
Of the players in our group I think only I and one other have GMed, but most of the rest of the group is relatively inexperienced so that might mitigate things a tad for them.
Aiden Brooks
Definitely. Fate is a good system for newbies. Their enthusiasm works in the system's favour.
Nolan Morgan
>I like Skills for tuning the genre.
Understandable. I find Aspects work well in any setting, but Skills can definitely let you personalize things.
>I was always garbage at letting players just use their best Approach for everything.
See, I'm not. And besides that, I find that Skills just make characters a one-trick pony, often pigeonholing them into combat or other specialties. I much prefer the freedom of choice and character that Aspects offer in their place.
Levi Turner
I homebrew a lot. One thing is to have a character's peak skill be +2 or 3 max. Core's
>everyone gets +6 skills from the start
is fucking ridiculous.
I do like to use Aspects over skills mechanically whenever possible.
One thing I rolled into the last Fate-based game I did was to have each character Aspect be themed, so in addition to the High Concept and Trouble we had a Background, Relationship (with a PC or NPC) and a Perspective (which another player gave them). It was optional, but I like when PCs have ties to the world from chargen and it nudged the players into doing it.
Another modification that I like is spendable Stress (which is an alternative in Core). Gives players another way to make things work when they really want a roll to succeed, and raises the stakes.
One thing I could never really find an elegant solution to was action economy. In conflicts whoever has more people gets a pretty big advantage with SwS boost cascades.
This is kind of exacerbated by the fact I usually roll mooks into a single entity with a single action and big stress pool since I dont' want to have to track them all individually.
Ayden Adams
>Relationship
I assume that's like a Bond (Dungeon World, etc.) that can be called upon like an Aspect? I've done something like this in the past: it worked well, for sure.
>Perspective
This is another Aspect, but is written from another player character's perspective, yeah? Sounds interesting; will definitely have to give this one a try.
James Peterson
>everyone gets +6 skills from the start
I'm sure the authors endorse a +4 max skill in the pyramid format.
However, I hate how this default arrangement makes a point that you have (1) "Really good, use this" skill.
My preference is to use 15-point skill column maxing at +3 skills—naturally, this is because I'm running something that is nowhere close to a "supers" adventure but I would prefer the players be able to make Aspects more often than not.
Brody Jenkins
I was really disappointed by FATE because I felt like the players never really were at any risk of dying so it was hard for me to make them feel like they were in danger. I don't know man...I am VERY narrative as a DM, but I just couldn't make myself feel like what I was doing was putting any pressure on the PC's. Then again I was running a Detective Murder Mystery game and maybe that's just not what the system is drawn for.